JAPAN
Quake missing triples
The number of people unaccounted for after the New Year’s Day earthquake more than tripled yesterday to 323, while the death toll rose to 168, local authorities said. A heavy dumping of snow meanwhile complicated relief efforts a week after the magnitude 7.5 quake, with more than 2,000 people still cut off and many others lacking power or forced to take shelter in crowded emergency sites. A new list published by Ishikawa Prefecture showed the number of missing people soaring from 31 to 281 in Wajima, one of the worst-hit places where the quake flatted dozens of houses and a major fire devastated a large area. Meanwhile, Tokyo’s Haneda airport yesterday reopened the runway a week after a fatal collision between a Japan Airlines airliner and a coast guard aircraft.
BANGLADESH
Hasina re-elected
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has swept to power for a fourth consecutive term in Bangladesh, following an election on Sunday that was boycotted by opposition parties and roiled by violent protests and international scrutiny. Her Awami League party won 224 seats out of 299, local media reported, cementing a majority in parliament and extending her 15-year-long rule that has already made her one of the most defining and divisive leaders in the nation’s history. Official results from the Election Commission were expected later yesterday.
INDIA
Rape convicts re-jailed
The Supreme Court yesterday said that 11 men convicted of a gang rape that drew global outrage, but who were released early, must return to jail. Bilkis Bano and two of her children were the only survivors among a group of Muslims attacked by a Hindu mob in Gujarat in 2002 during one of the country’s worst religious riots. Bilkis was pregnant at the time and seven of the 14 people murdered were relatives, including her three-year-old daughter. The convicts were freed in August 2022 following a recommendation by a state government panel, but must now return to jail within two weeks, the court ruled. “To keep them out would not be in consonance of the rule of law,” it said, adding that “arguments with emotional appeal become hollow when placed in juxtaposition with the facts of the case.”
AUSTRALIA
Nazi salute banned
Laws banning the Nazi salute and the display or sale of symbols associated with terror groups came into effect yesterday as the government responds to a rise in anti-Semitic incidents amid the Israel-Gaza war. The law makes it an offense punishable by up to 12 months in prison to publicly perform the Nazi salute, or display the Nazi swastika or the double-sig rune associated with the Schutzstaffel paramilitary group.
ECUADOR
Top criminal disappears
The country’s “most-wanted prisoner,” the leader of the Los Choneros criminal group, disappeared from the jail where he was being held, authorities said on Sunday. National Police Commander General Cesar Zapata told a news conference that the armed forces had determined that one of the inmates in the Guayaquil prison was missing. While Zapata did not mention the inmate by name, the prosecutor’s office said it would investigate “the alleged escape” of Jose Adolfo Macias, the leader of Los Choneros. Macias, whose alias is “Fito,” was sentenced in 2011 to 34 years in prison for crimes including drug trafficking and murder.
As the sun sets on another scorching Yangon day, the hot and bothered descend on the Myanmar city’s parks, the coolest place to spend an evening during yet another power blackout. A wave of exceptionally hot weather has blasted Southeast Asia this week, sending the mercury to 45°C and prompting thousands of schools to suspend in-person classes. Even before the chaos and conflict unleashed by the military’s 2021 coup, Myanmar’s creaky and outdated electricity grid struggled to keep fans whirling and air conditioners humming during the hot season. Now, infrastructure attacks and dwindling offshore gas reserves mean those who cannot afford expensive diesel
Does Argentine President Javier Milei communicate with a ghost dog whose death he refuses to accept? Forced to respond to questions about his mental health, the president’s office has lashed out at “disrespectful” speculation. Twice this week, presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni was asked about Milei’s English Mastiff, Conan, said to have died seven years ago. Milei, 53, had Conan cloned, and today is believed to own four copies he refers to as “four-legged children.” Or is it five? In an interview with CNN this month, Milei referred to his five dogs, whose faces and names he had engraved on the presidential baton. Conan,
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other